Public Backlash Growing Over AIG Bonuses for Executives

In the latest development in the ongoing U.S. financial crisis, AIG executives were recently awarded their bonuses as promised in contract language dating to early 2008 -- apparently before anyone knew that the current financial crisis was looming. In hindsight, it's impossible to believe that many people didn't see our current situation coming, especially considering that these were the same people who made our current situation inevitable.

But nonetheless, now that AIG is honoring its contracts to its executives - even though their performance was indisputably poor - everyone is up in arms. Politicians are taking to the pulpits, railing against the audacity of AIG to reward the same people who drove the company to failure, only to force the $180 billion in bailout money from the U.S. treasury and federal reserve. But it was these same politicians that allowed the problem to occur in the first place and the same politicians that structured the bailout language when it was initially crafted.

The bottom line here is that the banking system may be the only thing in our world more corrupt than our political system. Anyone that listened to Jon Stewart dress down Jim Cramer last week would quickly get the problem with the system. Collectively, millions of hard-working people dump billions into a financial system in the form of 401ks and IRAs and are told to leave that money in there and keep feeding their accounts, touching them again only when they are retirement age, when their massive contributions may have gained about 20% in value.

And where is that money for the 30 or 40 years that the banking industry controls it? It's being wagered in high-stakes financial game rooms, with billions and trillions changing hands in very short order. The people are financing a banking system that they know nothing about and which leaves their investments exposed to total and unrecoverable loss.